The southeast Colorado ranchers and farmers hardest hit by recent blizzards will soon get help from one of their own.
Michael Martin Murphey, an award-winning country songwriter synonymous with cowboy music, will headline a March 18 benefit concert at the Colorado State Fairgrounds in Pueblo.
The show is part of a fundraising effort intended to offset costs from the snowstorms, which have stranded or killed thousands of head of livestock in the agriculture-driven southeastern counties. Drifts from the repeated blizzards still reach four-feet high in some areas, making it impossible for cattle to graze and feed their young.
“It’s a far-reaching and prolonged pain that a lot of farmers and ranchers will be feeling down here,” said Troy Bredenkamp, executive vice president of the Colorado Farm Bureau.
Bredenkamp spent part of today touring affected ranches and farms near Trinidad with Murphey. He estimated 10,000 dead cattle and countless more missing, with an almost complete loss of winter pastures for grazing.
Murphey, who owns a ranch in Wisconsin’s Amish country, organized the concert after hearing about the havoc wrought by the blizzard on the national news and at the American Farm Bureau convention in January. He invited friends and fellow musicians like Waddie Mitchell and Baxter Black to follow him in donating their time to the concert.
“We didn’t call any government agencies or anything, we just got together with the farmers and ranchers and said ‘Let’s do this,'” Murphey said. “‘Let’s pull ourselves up by our bootstraps like they did in the old grange halls 100 years ago.'”
Earlier this month the U.S. Department of Agriculture denied disaster relief to 10 southeastern Colorado counties savaged by the storms, a decision criticized by Gov. Bill Ritter and U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar.
Murphey modeled the March 18 benefit after one he organized last year for farmers hit by fires in the Texas panhandle. That event sold out in three weeks with little promotion.
The Farm Bureau’s Bredenkamp said he would like to raise about $500,000 for the Colorado cause – $240,000 through ticket sales and the rest through corporate donations. He said about $80,000 has already been committed.
“There’s something pretty visual about Black Hawk helicopters having to drop hay, and that was picked up nationwide,” said Bredenkamp.
Staff writer John Wenzel can be reached at 303-954-1642 or jwenzel@denverpost.com.
